The Power of podcasts.

How to use the leverage of the Apple’s corporations online  itunes store to drive traffic to your website.

Its no big secret that Search Engine Optimisation is a key part of any website. One sure fire way of ensuring that the search engines index your site frequently is by having quality content on your site and updating that site on a regular basis.

O.K standard stuff so far and not too revealing either.

However its getting harder and harder to find new and exciting things to write about and to provide new fresh content for a blog site, or is it. What is the most effective way of re-using old content to create new content that is search engine friendly and a very powerful way to refresh your old content?

Podcasting.

Everyone and his dog is incorporating video and flash files into their websites these days and that’s a great way to drive volumes of traffic using the search engines. But its a true fact that in recent months the top search engines have listed podcasts in less than 5 minutes and that podcasts are now overtaking video in the online arena. So what about using the power of a relatively underused free resource that is so unique and so “out-there” to drive insane amounts of free traffic right to your website or blogpost. I am talking about Apple corporations flagship online store itunes.

Itunes is an online store where people can purchase music and find online video etc. However itunes also has a little used application for showcasing your podcasts thats FREE. Podcasting is an easy way of providing fresh web based content in an MP3 format. You host the podcasts right on your blog and Apple links to it right from within your own podcast channel at its online iTunes store using the RSS feed from your post.

So why should you care about that I hear you ask. Simply because by getting registered with your own unique podcast channel at the itunes store you can leverage the sales power of the Apple corporation to drive new untapped customers right to your blog or sales page.

Now let me repeat that again so its real clear, you can have Apple corporation link to and advertise your podcast for free and drive thousands of Apple customers right to your blog. Thats a huge market of information hungry iPod owners. Imagine the potential sales volumes that you could harness or the endless new subscribers you could harvest from that massive exposure. This is an untapped goldmine that is right for the picking in early 2009.

O.k so how does this work?

Essentially you have to produce or re-purpose your content from your blog , by recording an audio
version of each blog post using a free program from http://audacity.org with which you can record your audio ready for your podcast. You then add this podcast right to the corresponding written blog post using another free podcast resource from word press at http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/podcasting

Once you have the podcast completed and posted to your blog you have to manually submit the post to iTunes for consideration. The first post you submit should be a series of at least 3 podcasts on a chosen subject so that the iTunes staff have enough material to make an informed choice about the perceived value of the material. Submission and acceptance usually takes around 2 weeks on average so be patient. There are a few more hoops to be gone over in order to get your podcast channel up and running but the details are all available online at the itunes FAQ page and the terms and conditions pages of the site.

Happy podcasting in 2009.

I published this article today Wednesday 7th january 2009 because i have just published the same in an article at Ezinearticles.com. Sometime in the next few days I am going to upload this same article as a podcast to demonstrate how quickly podcasts can get listed in the search engines to prove the point of this post. Watch this space for more details

Technorati Tags: apple corporation, free traffic, itunes, mp3 format, podcasts, Resession proof, search engines index, SEO